


wrote a hundred letters just for me

by magicandlight



Series: The States [33]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers, Statetalia
Genre: Depending on how you view it, F/M, Getting Together, Invasion of Privacy, Letters, what could be considered
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-29
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:34:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25599661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magicandlight/pseuds/magicandlight
Summary: During the war, Elizabeth had written him dozens of letters that he'd never read, that he'd sent back because he was furious with her. He'd wondered, later during the war, what he might have known if he'd read them.
Relationships: Maryland/Virginia (Hetalia)
Series: The States [33]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/788712
Comments: 4
Kudos: 8





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this is set in 1953, almost a century after HLWM, the previous story in the MD/VA arc

"God, moving stuff from one house to another is a pain," Cordelia huffs, dropping a trunk rather than setting it down. 

Scott winces at the loud thump, glad the trunk isn't old enough to have fallen apart when she dropped it. 

"How did we all just forget that there was a statehouse in that part of Pennsylvania?" Cordelia continues, trying to brush of the dust that had rubbed on to her shirt. 

"Well, it wasn't exactly a time period anyone wanted to remember," Scott answered. Which was the problem. The house wasn't really livable at the moment, having been practically abandoned since reconstruction ended, and they couldn't sell it to the people who wanted to buy and remodel it without clearing out all the miscellaneous crap. 

Cordelia sighed, accepting his point. "Remind me never to owe Sera a favor again."

Scott snorts. "Yeah, good luck with that."

Cordelia rolls her eyes. "Alright, you start sorting and I'll go and make sure that's the last of it and get my idiots to stop destroying things."

"I can't believe Alfred told them they could just cut the murals out of the walls." 

Cordelia raised an eyebrow.

"Alright, you know, I actually can, but we should at least pretend we have faith in his common sense every once and awhile."

Cordelia laughs before she leaves. 

ꤠ

Scott tries to sort things, but he realizes after he finds a box of Helena's old dolls that he isn't sure what should or shouldn't be kept, so he just starts writing it down in a messy sort of inventory. There's boxes of books, of old clothes that would have been kept around for new states or scrap fabric, an almost complete set of Christmas china that Scott vaguely remembers from the year Callie threw a plate at Sam. Some of it will end up in museums across the country, but Scott's sure that one of the girls would like their jewelry box back. 

He writes down the jewelry box, adding _Del or Scarlett?_ as a note, before he moves to the next trunk. 

"Please don't be quilts," Scott mutters under his breath. He'd already opened one box of them and they had been unsalvageable- mice and moths and mildew had gotten to them, and they had _stunk_.

He flips the catches. 

It isn't quilts, but he almost wishes it was, because he recognizes that gray uniform, the flag pinned to the lapel.

Scott swallows and tears his eyes away from Elizabeth's confederate uniform. He glances around at the other contents of the trunk. A collection of confederate money including a single piece of confederate gold some museum would kill to have. A revolver. The broken handle of a rapier. Five different flags, folded into triangles- both flags of the Army of Northern Virginia, Elizabeth's state flag from during the war, the bonnie blue, the first flag of the confederate navy. 

He supposes he should be pleased, that they were left to rot in that house in the southwestern corner of Pennsylvania, but seeing all that again just _hurts_. Reconstruction had been painful for him and Elizabeth, a time period when they just argued all the time, when he blamed Liz for things out her control and she was just _angry_ all the time. 

Scott goes to shut the trunk on the memories of the war when he sees his name.

There's stacks of letters neatly bound in ribbon in a little metal box, addressed to him in Elizabeth's cursive.

During the war, Elizabeth had written him dozens of letters that he'd never read, that he'd sent back because he was furious with her. He'd wondered, later during the war, what he might have known if he'd read them.

He hears footsteps and sticks the box in with a box of his own stuff without thinking it through.

It's too late to put them back, though, because Cordelia is standing in the doorway.

"Hell, Scott, have you just been dumping boxes out? Anyway, we were going to go get lunch, you wanna come?"

ꤠ

Cordelia wrinkles her nose up when they sort through the stuff and she sees the trunk, before she shoves it towards him. "Here, I guess you're the one who should ask Elizabeth if she wants that back. And you should probably bring her all the other southerners' stuff too, since, you know,"

"She was their state leader," Scott finishes, tiredly, stacking all the stuff in a pile near the door. "I get it."

Scott keeps glancing at the edge of the box of letters poking out guiltily, but he doesn't put them back. 

ꤠ

He forgets about the letters for a while. The stuff from the old house sits in his garage, since Elizabeth had said she was too busy to come get whatever it was for the next week or so. 

They sit on his nightstand, untouched, and eventually, they get swept into the drawer and forgotten. 

ꤠ

"What exactly did you find?" Elizabeth asks as she follows him into the living room. "If it's another antique sewing machine, just donate it to some museum."

Scott grimaces, knowing that Elizabeth is in a good mood and this will ruin it. "I think it's better you just see it yourself."

Elizabeth pauses to study his face for a moment. "Alright, but you better not have called me just because you don't want to deal with some stuff like you did last time."

Scott sighs. "Alright, I'll go get it."

Elizabeth nods, sliding off her jacket and laying it on the back of the couch before she sits down. "I'll wait here, then."

He brings out the other boxes first, piling them on the table, before he gets the trunk out, a little worried she'll recognize it and immediately leave, but there's no recognition in her eyes when he finally sets it down in front of her. 

"Alright, so I don't think all of it's yours, but you'd probably know who it does belong to," Scott tells her, sitting on the table instead of beside her on the couch so he can try to control the order she goes through things. 

Elizabeth nods, letting him hand her a little chest. She opens it and doesn't even have to look twice at the jewelry in it. "This is Evangeline's. She'll want it back, this brooch here was a gift from one of her governors."

"Really? I thought Scarlett, because of the pearls." Scott says, just to make conversation as he hands her another box.

"No, Scarlett doesn't like long beads like those."

That's how it goes for the next dozen boxes: Elizabeth telling him whose it is, Scott commenting on something about it. 

And then he hands her the first civil war box. 

Elizabeth stills when she opens it to reveal tarnished military medals, faded insignia cut from a uniform.

She swallows, shutting it and setting it aside. "That's- that's Josh's, I believe. I'd have to ask but I doubt he'll want to keep it."

She reacts better to the next thing, an old hatbox with a few flags and a uniform jacket. "Scarlett's," she answers tersely, setting it aside and reaching out and grabbing a box herself rather than wait for him. 

"David."

Another one. "Austin. That's his bonnie blue, he might want that, but get rid of the rest."

"Tim, mostly. Some of Caden's."

And so on, until all that's left is the trunk.

Elizabeth's jaw is tight, having caught on to his attempts to save the worst for last, and Scott just bites his lip and opens it. 

"Goddamn it," Elizabeth breathes out, and then she's up and out of the door. 

"Elizabeth-" He pauses on seeing her furiously pacing the length of the porch. 

"Just get me a lighter, Scott." Elizabeth tells him, yanking a cigarette from a pack. 

Scott does, handing it over unsurely. "You smoke?"

"No," Elizabeth answers. 

Scott just looks at her. 

"Used to," she sighs out. "These aren't mine. I took them from Caleb."

She leans against the porch railing. "Let me finish this cigarette and I'll look at the damn box, happy Scott?"

Scott leans against the railing beside her. "You don't really talk about it."

Elizabeth shoots him an incredulous look. "Why would I? And you never wanted to know before. I distinctly remember you yelling at me for even mentioning Spotsylvania after the war."

Scott flinches back a little. She's not wrong. He did yell at her about Spotsylvania once. Yelled at her about Booth choosing her motto to shout when he killed the president, about her seceding in the first place, about a dozen things she couldn't do anything to change. 

"I was mad. You- you just left."

Elizabeth expression hardens again. "You abandoned me too, you know. You treated me like trash for years after the war."

"And I've apologized for that," Scott says, forcing himself to calm down a little, not get so defensive he pushes her buttons.

Elizabeth shakes her head and stubs out the cigarette. "Whatever. Let's just get this over with."

ꤠ

Elizabeth immediately takes the confederate naval flag and chucks it into the museum box, but she hesitates with Lee's headquarter flag, mouth thinning when she slowly sets it in too.

"Liz, if you want to keep it-"

"I don't want what they mean anymore."

Scott shuts his mouth. 

She unfurls the bonnie blue, tracing over the star. "This one- I made this one, at the start of the war," she tells him, something pained in her voice. "It should go to Austin. He can decide what to do with it."

Elizabeth sets it off to the side, more careful with it than she is with her own state flag when she tosses it into the museum box, but she's downright aggressive when she takes the battle flag of the Army of Northen Virginia and throws it at him. "Burn it."

"Elizabeth-" Scott begins, shocked. 

"They have enough of those damned things. I don't want it, I don't want what it means anymore. Burn it," Elizabeth cuts him off harshly, and Scott stares at her for a moment before he nods. 

She puts the confederate money and the revolver into the museum box, but she pauses on the uniform. 

Elizabeth closes her eyes and just breathes for a moment. "You know, this isn't even mine. I took it from Daniel."

Then she pulls off the flag lapel pin, setting it aside. Removes only a few of the badges from the breast before she drops it into the museum box.

The rest goes quickly, little trinkets Elizabeth donates or throws away, a knit blanket she keeps. 

She stops though, at the broken rapier handle, just staring at it for a few long moments before she sets it back down. 

And Scott wonders. 

ꤠ

That night, he takes the first letter and breaks the wax seal. 


	2. Chapter 2

Scott doesn't sleep that night, too busy reading the letters. 

Distantly, he'd known that the war hadn't been pleasant for the southerners, but he hadn't thought that Jackson was a complete psychopath towards his own states.

At the worst, Scott had figured that he'd hit Evangeline, which was bad enough. Not abused the entire fucking south, mentally and physically. 

Elizabeth's words haunt him. 

He has to stop because he's shaking when he finishes the letter that ends with the sentences _I can't decide if you would be proud of me or disgusted, but I don't know what else to do. It is the only plan I have. I'm sorry. You have to understand, I have to protect them any way I can. I can't fail them when they need me the most,_ afraid to go on to the next one.

All he feels is a mixture of fear and anger as he reads the part about the rejected deal. 

By the time he gets to the winter of 1863 and Elizabeth writes about Jackson choking her to death, he's crying. 

At some point, she'd stopped trying to mail them, stopped hoping that he would bother to read them, but they still all begin with _Dear Scott_. They're messier, from the point on. More like journal entries than letters. There's one where Elizabeth writes that she loves him, that she had since before the revolution and Scott just stares at that one for a long time. 

Because all this time. All this fucking time, she was just waiting for any kind of sign and he could never give it to her. If at any point in their lives, Scott had tried, he would have had her. But he never had. Hell, he'd done the opposite, if anything. He'd pushed her away, during the revolution. He stood her up the time she tried to make a move, no matter how accidental standing her up had been. 

The last letter addressed to him is dated just days before Appamattox. It's only four words. 

_I am so tired_.

It's not the last letter in the box, though. 

ꤠ  
  
He contemplates what he's about to do for a long time. 

While Scott would accept he was in the wrong, reading those other letters, they were addressed to him. This one is not. 

This one is for _Miss Elizabeth Dare, per the last will and testament of Jackson Wilkes_.

Scott hadn't even been aware that Jackson had a last name, but of course it would be that _one_. 

Scott sighs, accepts that Elizabeth is going to murder him and that he's damned to hell and breaking a federal law by opening someone else's mail, and breaks the seal on the envelope. 

ꤠ

It takes Scott an entire hour to calm down enough to think rationally after he finishes reading the letter Jackson had written to Elizabeth. 

He'd wondered why she hadn't read it, why it had still been sealed, but Elizabeth must have known what it was going to say. 

The terrible, awful things Jackson had written about her. About what he had _done_ to her, what he had _wanted_ to do. 

It's a good thing nations don't leave bodies, because Scott would dig him up just to tear him apart in heartbeat.

The lack of action, of letters to read or revenge to plot, though, just means that Scott has time to sit and think. To think about how Elizabeth was scared and hurt and she needed him, and he didn't do anything to help her because he was too busy being an ass. How even after the war was over, he'd been too angry, blamed her for things that weren't really her fault, and he had left her to deal with everything by herself. 

Elizabeth had went through hell, and instead of being compassionate, he'd made comments about Booth and his choice of mottos during the assassination.

Scott doesn't know how she can stand him. By all reason, she should hate him. 

Maybe she does. Maybe she doesn't love him anymore. 

But _maybe_ , Scott thinks, maybe she does. Maybe she's just still waiting for him to make a move. And if she isn't, maybe this will be closure, for both of them. 

He picks up the letter where she had wrote that she was in love with him, and then picks up Jackson's letter, too, because he needs to know if it's true. 

And then he grabs his keys and leaves, barely remembering to shut the door on his way out. 

ꤠ

Elizabeth doesn't have a flower at his house, and he doesn't have one at hers, so Scott drives. 

He tries to think of what he's going to say, but it doesn't work. He tries not to think about the fact that Elizabeth was in love with him, that time during the revolution. That she was in love with him for decades while Scott tried to convince himself all he felt for her was friendship. 

Needless to say, trying not to think about it doesn't work very well. 

ꤠ

He knocks, and he's suddenly aware as he waits for Elizabeth to answer the door that he probably looks like a mess. But it's too late to do anything by the time he notices because that's when she opens the door. 

"Scott?" Elizabeth asks, looking him over for some sign of why he's on her doorstep on a Wednesday afternoon. He doesn't even get a word out before her eyes drop to the letters in his hand. 

"You didn't," Elizabeth hisses out. 

"Liz-"

"What the hell is wrong with you?" she interrupts. "That's so- that's a gross invasion of privacy-"

"Is it true?"

Elizabeth stops, visibly restraining herself. "Is what true?" She manages to get out after a few beats. 

"What Jackson wrote-"

"I don't know, I didn't read it."

He tries to hand it to her, but she smacks his hand away and steps back. "I don't want to. I spent a long time stitching myself back together and I'm not ripping myself apart again to tell you if Jackson was lying or not in a letter specifically written to make me feel awful."

Scott swallows, glancing down at the letter before he crumbles it up and shoves it in his pocket, leaving just the one she had written. "Okay. What about this one?"

Elizabeth does take that one, paling as she reads it. "Scott-"

"Because I was in love with you too!" Scott blurts out. 

Maybe he should have tried harder to practice his speech on the drive over. 

Elizabeth is just staring at him. She opens her mouth and closes it a few times, at a complete loss. "Was?" she asks, finally, almost sounding horrified. 

"What?"

"Was, past-tense?"

It takes him a moment. "No! Not past tense!"

"O...kay..." she responds. 

Scott puts his hands over his face. "This is not how this was supposed to go."

"I'm pretty sure that's your fault."

"Probably." Scott composes himself. "Okay. Okay. I love you, am in love with you. Present tense."

"Well, that's good, because I happen to be in love with you." She pauses before adding, "Present tense."

There's the hint of laughter in her voice, but Scott doesn't even care that she's making fun of him. She loves him too. Still. Even after everything.

He kisses her. 

The letter falls to the ground when wraps his arms around her, but that's okay. It's served it's purpose.

Elizabeth kisses back, both leaning up on her toes and pulling him down to do so. 

Scott laughs, breathless and giddy when they break apart. 

"I love you but I'm still annoyed you read those," she informs him as she picks the letter off the stoop and sets it on the hall table. "And we're gonna talk about that later, but do you want to come in?"

Scott smiles at her again. "I'd like that."


	3. epilogue

Elizabeth's hair is in his face when he wakes up the next morning. 

They had talked, mostly, last night. About how Liz didn't like that he'd read the letters, but she wasn't too upset about it right that moment, about the war and all the issues that came with it. They'd kissed, talked some more, and at some point during the kissing and the talking, they must have fallen asleep. 

Elizabeth is pressed against him, hands gripping fistfuls of his shirt to keep him right next to her, and Scott is just absurdly in love with her. 

He gently pries her fingers off, about to sit up when Elizabeth flings out an arm without opening her eyes, pulling him back. 

She kissed his shoulder, the closest part of him to her. "Just stay. No more panicking or hiding."

Scott drops a kiss to her forehead. "I know. It'll only take a minute, I promise, then I'll be right back."

Elizabeth opens her eyes to look at him before she sighs and takes her arm off of him. "Fine."

ꤠ

She's dozed off again by the time he comes back, so Scott nudges her gently until she opens her eyes, despite her grumbling. 

Her annoyed look vanishes when she sees the rose he's holding out, her lips parting slightly in surprise as she sits up. 

"Where-" Her eyebrows scrunch together, and the annoyed look comes back, but that's okay. "Scott, did you pick one of my roses-?"

"What was it you said to Wes that one time? A boy who never brings you flowers isn't worth it?"

"You can't just-" Elizabeth begins, but she's smiling. "It doesn't count if they're my flowers to begin with."

She still takes the rose, though. Scott smiles at her. 

"Guess that means I'll have to get you real flowers, then, if I'm going to ask you out."

Elizabeth looks at him, twirling the rose between her fingers. "Oh?"

Scott kisses her cheek. "Yes. How does Friday at six sound?"

Elizabeth grins. "It sounds great."


End file.
